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| West Vancouver Marina - 9 February 2025 |
Before I go into heavier stuff I want to point out that yesterday's Microcosmos Quartet's concert at the West Vancouver Marina was wonderfully unusual in many ways. It was organized by Dato (David) Siradze who runs the marina. This was the first time I have attended a concert in the round. During the interval Siradze suggested we change seats to get a different point of view. In the first half of the concert the lighting was overhead. For the second half Siradze use individual lights for the musicians and the room went dark. It was magic.
While I may be a decent photographer my musical journey has not been one I can necessarily write about. That was evident to me yesterday when I went to the Microcosmos Quartet concert at the West Vancouver Marina at Eagle Harbour.
I had gone to an earlier version of that concert a few days
before. I have now heard Béla
Bartók’s String Quartet No2 in a minor four times. If someone were to play me
this quartet I would be able to identify the composer and no more. But on the second hearing, Dimitri Shostakovich String Quartet No. 11 in F minor Op. 122, I can safely write that I enjoyed it even more this second time around and I just might identify it in the future.
Earlier Version of Concert - Friendly Masons
While in my high school in Austin, Texas in the late 50s, I became a fairly good alto saxophonist in the school’s band and jazz band, whatever skill I may have had in reading music, is all gone. My worse lapses into musical disasters began in 1971 when I was teaching at a high school in Mexico City. Students in my class asked me, “Mr. Hayward what do you think of Alice Cooper?” My answer was met by a roar of laughter, “No, who is she?” Not much later a musical friend asked me on my opinion on Carmina Burana and my answer was exactly like the previous one.
I have written in this recent blog about the Microcosmos Quartet concert like last night’s how in music you cannot fake incompetence.
Earlier Version of Concert - Friendly Masons
With that above clearing on my questionable skill in writing a musical review (I am just an amateur) I would like to explain why I have gone twice. I wanted to listen to Argentine composer, Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae since at my age of 82, statistically; I will never listen to it played alive and in my presence again.
Because I am an Argentine I am quite obsessed in reading almost every day something of Jorge Luís Borges. He had this obsession in later years of writing poems about activities that he would be doing for the last time like closing a door or seeing his reflection in a mirror.
When I see toothpaste on sale I sometimes will buy a couple but I think in a Borgesian manner, “Will I be around to use that second one?”
Here is the poem called Límites. Borges wrote two versions. The longer one is more complex so I will place here in Spanish and in English the simpler one.
Límites
De estas calles que ahondan el poniente,
una habrá (no sé cuál) que he recorrido
ya por última vez, indiferente
y sin adivinarlo, sometido
a Quién prefija omnipotentes normas
y una secreta y rígida medida
a las sombras, los sueños y las formas
que destejen y tejen esta vida.
Si para todo hay término y hay tasa
y última vez y nunca más y olvido
¿quién nos dirá de quién, en esta casa,
sin saberlo, nos hemos despedido?
Tras el cristal ya gris la noche cesa
y del alto de libros que una trunca
sombra dilata por la vaga mesa,
alguno habrá que no leeremos nunca.
Hay en el Sur más de un portón gastado
con sus jarrones de mampostería
y tunas, que a mi paso está vedado
como si fuera una litografía.
Para siempre cerraste alguna puerta
y hay un espejo que te aguarda en vano;
la encrucijada te parece abierta
y la vigila, cuadrifronte, Jano.
Hay, entre todas tus memorias, una
que se ha perdido irreparablemente;
no te verán bajar a aquella fuente
ni el blanco sol ni la amarilla luna.
No volverá tu voz a lo que el persa
dijo en su lengua de aves y de rosas,
cuando al ocaso, ante la luz dispersa,
quieras decir inolvidables cosas.
¿Y el incesante Ródano y el lago,
todo ese ayer sobre el cual hoy me inclino?
Tan perdido estará como Cartago
que con fuego y con sal borró el latino.
Creo en el alba oír un atareado
rumor de multitudes que se alejan;
son lo que me ha querido y olvidado;
espacio y tiempo y Borges ya me dejan.
Limits (English)
Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
